Drugs, knives force closure of rooming house in Fitzroy

Aisha Dow

The discovery of weapons and a suspected night-time ice drug trade has prompted the closure of a Fitzroy rooming house, its homeless tenants given 120 days to find new accommodation.

The 31-bed hostel in a prime location, a Victorian terrace home opposite the Carlton Gardens, was judged unsafe by its operators, Yarra Community Housing, last month. It is only the second time in 15 years it has been forced to close one of its properties.

Three years ago a 32-year-old man died after being stabbed in the thigh at the rooming house. That incident was preceded by three other deaths and eight overdoses in the space of six months.

More recently it was believed the hostel was playing host to drug dealing - including ice.

''Lots of people who didn't live in the property were entering the property at night,'' Yarra Community Housing chief executive Rob Leslie said.

Management also became concerned about violence when knives were detected at the Nicholson Street address.

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The Age spoke to a regular visitor of the rooming house who said the property was ''filthy'' and some tenants were troublesome.

''Some people can't help it, they're mentally ill and there's no other place for them to go,'' he said.

''I've lived in boarding houses before and this is the worst I've ever seen,'' he said. ''There's probably drug dealing that goes on - it's everywhere.''

About 15 homeless people remain at the Fitzroy hostel but Mr Leslie said he was confident accommodation would be found for all remaining tenants before the rooming house closed in three to four months.

Mr Leslie said his organisation was investigating ways to make the rooming house safe for its reopening. Ideally, he said, on-site staff would be employed, ''but that's very expensive and difficult to achieve''.

Only about 13 per cent of Yarra Community Housing's 1500 long-term housing units are ''traditional'' rooming houses, with shared bathrooms and kitchens. The others are fully contained apartments, a model that has proved much safer for the tenants.

In 2009 YCH received cash to convert seven of its worst rooming houses into studios, through then prime minister Kevin Rudd's nation-building program.

Mr Leslie said it would cost $25 million to $30 million to adapt the remaining 14 rooming houses into studios. ''What we know works for people … is good-quality housing with appropriate models of support,'' he said. ''The challenge is for the government to invest in affordable housing.''

Council to Homeless Persons chief executive Jenny Smith said homeless people were being forced into rooming houses because of a lack of affordable one-bedroom rentals in Melbourne.

She said self-contained apartments gave residents more ''choice and control''.

''Living in and managing rooming houses can be difficult. People are living in a situation where they are sharing a bathroom and kitchen with strangers and they've got little choice or control over with whom they share their day,'' she said.

''I'm not saying that rooming houses can't function well but it can be a fine balance.''